Tendresses

Poetry from the European Languages

Catullus (c.84 BC–54 BC)

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Gaius Valerius Catullus was the son of a wealthy citizen of Verona. His father owned a villa at Sirmio on Lake Garda. He lived in Rome and was a friend of Cicero, and (speculatively) lover of Clodia Metelli (Lesbia). Little more is known of him, other than that he travelled to Bithynia in the Black Sea region as one of Caius Memmius Gemellus’s suite. There he visited the grave of his drowned brother, in the Troad.